


Your Surrender

by bench



Series: We all knew they were going to fuck eventually [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Blow Jobs, Dubious Consent, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Stridercest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:09:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bench/pseuds/bench
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bro is tempted. Dave is fine with this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [In the Next Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/971102) although you don't need to have read it to read this.
> 
> Many thanks to [chair](http://inimitable-nectar.tumblr.com) without whom this fic would not exist.

You are reasonably sure you fucked up on such an astronomical level that ballads will be written about how much of a dumb piece of shit you are. Epic poems even. If you weren't working you would be slamming your forehead on the nearest solid surface. Instead you flip over to your newest remix and try not to take it too much to heart.

_We're gonna rock this house until we knock it down  
So turn the volume loud, cause it's mayhem 'til the A.M._

You are sure that Dave heard you jerking off. Normally you wouldn't care. You are two dudes living in a one bedroom house; shit happens. However, you are the adult here and you should have had enough self-control to not shout his name when you came. It's been the better part of a week and you can tell, even through two layers of shades that he is having trouble meeting your eye. He heard you, there is no doubt about it. The real question is what the fuck you are going to do about it now.

_So baby make just like K-Fed and let yourself go, let yourself go  
Say fuck it before we kick the bucket_

The apartment is unnaturally subdued. You haven't had a strife in two weeks. You have pushed your work schedule past normal, over busy, and right into compulsive territory. You have never been so on top of orders in your life. You can't stand to be alone with your thoughts and it's making you more than a little psychotic. For fuck's sake you are practically his father, you have raised him for most of his life, you are one fucked up man and you can't deal with being in your own head.

The fact that you have no intention of ever taking your fantasies into reality isn't much comfort when you spend every second of your increasingly limited free time imagining circumstances where you would. You won't, but if things were different, if he were older, if he weren't your brother, you would. You wouldn't hesitate. He is the only person on earth who gets you and can come anywhere near keeping up with you. You want him, and even if you won't act on Dave's person, it won't stop your rather overactive imagination.

No matter how much you try to will it away the problem isn't going away on its own. What you need is a distraction. Not another job or another hobby, but a _distraction_. When you packed up for the club a few hours ago you shoved a few condoms and a few packets of lube in your bag, with every intention of getting some use out of them. And once the urge to fuck someone against a wall is out of your system you are going to have a serious discussion with Dave. Straighten this out.

If he wants to leave and live with one of his friends you would understand.

The idea of losing him makes you sick, but not a sick as taking advantage of being the only person in the world that he can rely on.

You eye your drink with well-disguised misery then toss the whole thing back. You aren't technically supposed to be drinking on the job. This has never stopped you and it's not like a low buzz has ever been enough to make your performance any less than the best that money can buy. Your boss doesn't even bother shooting you glares over it any more.

But you usually stick to beer and only a few at that. When you signal the bartender to send you another whiskey sour you know that you are fucking up yet again.

You have long since bypassed "low buzz" and are working your way into "marginally impaired" territory. If you continue at this rate it won't be too long before the alcohol train takes you through drunkville to deposit you soundly in hammeredtopia. Hopefully you can get off before you get to regret town. 

Exceptionally stupid analogies are never a good sign for your mental state. You may have bypassed marginally impaired some time ago. Maybe your serious Dave discussion will have to wait until tomorrow. What you definitely can't wait for is a good fuck. With someone who is within ten years of your age. Because you can't have sex with Dave. Ever. No matter how much you want to.

You groan and try to push all thoughts of Dave out of your head. You're on the job, this really isn't the time to be thinking about your huge boner for your kid. You might be drunk but you can still mix the sickest of possible beats. You lean over the tables and gently nudge the bass down until you're left with a trance-y treble tune and a fast snare/high hat beat that you gradually slow.

You can feel the tension in the air as the sweaty, writhing crowd below you slows and stares up at the booth in anticipation. You keep bringing it down until the dancing has almost completely stopped, the audience tense with anticipation. You hold it just a second longer until the tension peaks.

_Everybody in the club_

You burst into action, cranking the bass and the beat up as the crowd explodes into noise and motion.

You let yourself bask in the heady rush that always comes when your audience reacts to your sick beats like puppets on strings. God DAMN but you are good. Maybe the hours are kind of shitty and it's hot as fuck up in the DJ booth, but you love your job.

Your time is winding down and you came here with a goal in mind. You might be more than a little on the drunk side, but that doesn't really change anything. From where you stand in the DJ booth you can see almost the entire club. It won't be too hard to find a likely candidate. Who the hell doesn't want to fuck the DJ? 

When you climb the stairs down to the main floor there is a small cluster of men and women around the entrance. To the inexperienced eye they would look like just a few more clubbers, but the way they are not so subtly eyefucking you gives them away. You fight down a grin at the predictability of it all as you push through them to the bathroom. You'll pick someone out when you come back. This is hardly the first time you have picked someone up after a gig (although it has been much, much longer than you really want to think about), so you just follow the routine.

You give the group a thorough but actually subtle look over. A young-looking blond catches your eye. His pants don't leave a lot to the imagination and his ass, or what you can see of it, is choice. The fact that he bears a more than passing resemblance to Dave is not something that you are going to linger over. You came here to get it out of your system, it doesn't have to mean anything.

After visiting the bathroom and drinking a few glasses of water in a (probably useless) attempt to mitigate the hangover you know will be hammering on your brain tomorrow morning, you make your move. The key is to be even _more_ unsubtle than the small group of hopefuls. You pause mid step on the way to the stairs and look him over, long and slow. Then you stare unashamedly at his ass and lick your lips. Meet his eyes, smirk, small nod. You can practically see his blood rushing south. Without a word you head back up to the booth and switch from your playlist back to mixing real time. You don't bother glancing his way again. 

It's child's play, really. 

You are the master seducer, it is you.

\------------------------------------

The club closes at two but it takes you a good half hour to get your shit packed up.

Despite the wait the blond is waiting for you outside the back entrance, leaning casually against the wall and grinning at his phone. He's smarter than you had expected. Usually when you go after a fling you have to go collect them around the front. When you shove the door open he turns to face you his smile morphing into something that he no doubt thinks is a sexy smirk. It's trite. You might be a little jaded. 

You are too far gone to even consider driving home but your stuff will be safer stashed in the back of your van than it would be left inside the club all night. You are weighted down with equipment and the tangled cords threaten to trip you at every step. 

He starts to hold out his hand, but thinks better of it. "My name's Chris."

"Dirk. Carry this."

You drop one of your lighter, less valuable bags on the ground and turn to walk towards your van without turning to see if he picked it up. Of course he did. What the fuck else is he going to do. You shove all of your stuff into the van and reclaim your bag without exchanging further conversation. 

When you are done loading your stuff and slam the trunk shut you turn to find him leaning against your van in the same way he was leaning against the wall of the club earlier all forced-casual and overconfident. It's clichéd. The same thing you've seen a hundred times before. The only place you can get some originality is- nope, not thinking about that. Instead you step far into his personal space, hands pressed to the cool glass of the window on either side of his head.

"So, Chris." Your voice is a low purr that actually makes him shiver. You contain a smirk. "What can I do for you tonight?"

He hooks his fingers into your belt loops with an ease that implied it was a move he had been planning for some time. He uses his grip to pull you forward until your body is flush against his and you are more or less breathing into his hair. He is taller than Dave by a good half foot and he smells like shitty cologne and cigarettes instead of- not happening, don't think about it…

"How about you fuck me here against your van."

You are finally getting somewhere approximating turned on. You can get behind pretty much any kink a man can throw your way, but voyeurism is fairly high on your list. You're can do this. You're making it happen.

"I think that can be arranged."

You press forward further, trapping his hands between your bodies and wedging one of your legs between his. He immediately grinds down on it with an exaggerated moan. You are distantly relieved that he can't see you roll your eyes with your shades on. You're actually bored. Bored and more than a little annoyed with yourself. How the fuck are you supposed to stop thinking about… the thing you aren't thinking about if everything else is so damn disappointing?

To distract yourself you go for his ear since it's just right there, finding metal when you close your lips over the lobe. You tug at the stud gently with his teeth. His moan this time is much more sincere. Maybe if you can really get him going it will get you going. Yeah, that makes sense. He is still grinding on your thigh and you can feel him getting harder. You honesty have a ways to go. You blame the alcohol instead of your too-tall, wrong-smelling partner.

You work your way from down his neck until sucking and biting lightly until he is approaching a shivery wreck. You think he would fall to the dirty pavement if you weren't holding him up with your body. It’s honestly tiresome. You could probably get off if he got his hands involved but…

Being honest with yourself, you feel just as filthy getting it on with this kid as you felt last week fantasizing about your younger brother. It feels like _cheating_. You just want to go home and try to forget all of tonight ever happened. And then maybe take action to forget everything else too. You're tired and sobering up and you just want to go home and get trashed and see your- _and go to bed_.

Chris can has finally picked up on you lack of enthusiasm and has disengaged his fingers from your belt loops to make for your dick. Fortunately being drunk doesn't really slow you down, and in a movement faster than he can see you snatch his hands away, pinning them to the van to either side of his hips. His reaction is immediate and would have been rewarding before you apparently went completely insane. Instead, with your new mental state, it just makes you vaguely sick. You don’t want this and you were a dumbass for ever thinking you did. 

You step back abruptly and he nearly does fall with the sudden loss of support.

You stare at each other.

"I… fuck."

You definitely don't turn and run, but you turn and run flashstepping out of his reach before you are really aware of what you are doing. Chris' shouting echoes down the alley behind you, but you ignore it. 

You are the biggest sack of dicks to ever exist. You have a massive boner for your sixteen year old brother, you blueballed some poor kid with no explanation, and you have no idea what to do about any of it. Except to find a cab, go home, and drink until you pass out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave makes a move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please observe new tags!

Fortunately there are always plenty of cabs in this part of town at night to take care of drunk assholes like you. You find one idling in a parking lot a block or so from where your van was parked behind the club. The driver asks if you need a ride as you stumble, drunk and out of breath, towards him. You grunt in agreement before sagging exhausted into the back seat. You push your shades up to sit on the top of your head so you can bury your face in your palms.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

You are not right. You are broken in the brain. You can't get it up for anyone but your sixteen year old brother, because everything else feels wrong. 

And now you are going to have to go home. 

And sleep on your fold-out.

Where you have one more than one occasion jacked off to thoughts of him.

Goddamnit.

Your thoughts are caught in an endless loop of "I'm so fucked up" and "what fuck am I going to do now?" There is no answer and the words repeat over and over and over.

You aren't sure how long you'd been sitting there in the back seat of some random cab, face resting on your palms, before you realized the driver was asking you where you wanted to go. You slur out the intersection closest to your apartment and resume your miserable introspection. 

It takes maybe ten minutes to get to your building, although the drive seems to go by much faster. You over-tip apologetically to make up for sitting in the back of the cab like an idiot. At least the driver can have a tolerable night. The walk to the apartment's door takes too little time, so you stare it for a long, uncomfortable moment unable to bring yourself to open it. Maybe you shouldn't even be here. Maybe you should find a hotel there you can chase your thoughts around your head without their subject in easy walking distance. 

You sigh in exhausted defeat and key yourself into the building anyway.

You haven't thought of a solution to any of your problems. You can't stop thinking, can't stop wanting. Maybe it _would_ be a good idea to send Dave away for all that it would feel like tearing your heart out of your chest. He has friends in Washington and New York, you're sure one of them would be willing to take him in. Remove temptation. You aren't sure what might happen if he stays here. At best you'll die of sexual frustration. At worst…

You unlock the door to the apartment as quietly as you can, which isn't very quietly at all. You wince and barely avoid tripping over a pile of shoes and other crap in the hallway. Honestly you couldn't be much louder. 

Hopefully Dave is asleep. You don't think you could stand it if he came out to chat. You are one provocation away from completely losing your shit. There is light spilling through the crack under Dave's door, but the apartment is dead silent, no sound of music or conversation. Maybe he fell asleep with the light on. _Hopefully_ he fell asleep with the light on. 

You had intended to take out your bottle of emergency scotch and drinking yourself into unconsciousness when you got back, but you don't think that will be necessary. You can barely muster the energy to unfold the futon before you collapse onto it, still fully clothed. 

You manage to remove your shades, at least, dropping them awkwardly over the edge of the mattress and shoving a pillow under your head. In a few seconds you are floating on the very edge of sleep. Then you are abruptly pulled back by the creak of Dave's door opening. 

Shit.

Hopefully he'll think you're asleep and just get his glass of water or whatever and leave you alone. The last thing you need right now is an actual conversation with the object of your obsession.

He walks over to the edge of the futon and stops. What the fuck is he doing? Is he… staring at you? You can't sleep with him standing over you like this, your body oddly inundated with energy by his inspection. You are too tired both physically and emotionally for whatever new bullshit this is, but not exhausted enough to sleep it away.

_Go away Dave. Go away, go away, go away!_

Instead you feel the futon shift as Dave climbs on top of it. It creaks softly as he crawls across the mattress to kneel at your side. You are facing the other direction so you can't see what he is doing. But he also can't see you. Without your shades your poker face is completely gone and the last thing you need is for him to see the burning desire in your eyes. You want him to stay, but you really want him to leave. What you want him to do most is stop just sitting there looking at you. With no better idea than to just continue to feign sleep you burn with exhausted confusion and curiosity. 

He lightly brushes his fingers over your back and you finally turn to look at him.

"What are you doing, little man?" He starts violently and you stare at each other, you with your face still resting on the pillow and he sitting on his knees staring down at you. 

He isn’t wearing his shades either and even in this low light you can see the bright red of his eyes. Fuck. You love his eyes. You love how no one knows about them but you. Your own eyes drift down to see that he is naked but for his boxers. _Fuck_.

"Bro I…" His voice is quiet and hesitant and he is biting his lip and shifing uncomfortably. You haven't seen him express this much since he was just a kid. What is he _doing_?

"You…" His shoulders sag as he heaves a long, defeated sigh. 

"Never mind." In a surge of motion he pushes back up to his knees and begins to crawl away from you. "This was dumb, forget it. I'm gonna go to-"

You both stare at where you have grabbed his wrist, preventing his retreat. You didn't mean to do that, why did you do that? Let go. Let go, let go, let go.

But you don't. Instead you tug gently until he is once again sitting with his knees pressed against your side. 

"What is it?" Your voice is soft, but Dave flinches anyway.

"Please stop avoiding me." He blurts it quickly, looking away from you and blushing bright red.

"Avoiding-?"

"No, shut the fuck up. You wanted me to talk? Shut your mouth and listen to me talk." His volume increases word by word until he is nearly shouting. He takes a deep breath to gather himself, then begins again. "You are working yourself into exhaustion, you won't talk to me, won't meet my eye, and do you have any idea how long it has been since we've had a strife? I know what's wrong with you, Bro and you know what? I don't care. So you need to get. The fuck. Over it. And I am willing to help."

"What do you mean you know what's wrong with me? What do you mean help?" You're drunk and exhausted and suddenly terrified. Your cool is completely gone. You find yourself sitting up, knee to knee with Dave hands clutching his shoulders in what is probably a bruising grasp.

"It's ok, Bro. It's all gonna be ok." He shrugs out of your grip on his shoulders and slides into your lap in one smooth motion, legs wrapping around to press his heels against your ass. Your brain blue-screens. The klaxons are blaring in your head, sounding an alarm that you can't even begin to understand. You are missing something here, something huge, but you are too busy being blinded by abject confusion and no small amount of arousal to connect the dots. You thought you had lost control of your life before, but this is something else. Something terrible or wonderful or unbelievable, but definitely life-changing.

When you wrench yourself out of your panicked reverie Dave's forehead is pressed to yours and his eyes are boring into you. His hands have nudged your shirt up just enough so that he can rest his hands on your bare sides, just below your ribs. His thumbs are gently stroking the skin of your stomach. Your own hands are limp at your sides.

"You still in there?"

You aren't. You have flipped so far off the handle that you have phased through the fabric of time and space right into a bizarre parallel universe. A parallel universe where you seem to inexplicably have a lapful of everything that you have been wanting for the last year completely by his own will. You aren't sure if this parallel universe is awful or awesome. All this time you have wanted Dave, but you never actually _wanted_ him. You never thought even in your wildest dreams that you could possibly get the object of your obsession and even the tiniest tease of getting it has rendered you entirely braindead. It is thoroughly unexpected and thoroughly wrong and thoroughly wonderful. The real world keeps fading in and out, time skipping around as you overclock trying to reconcile you old worldviews with this new reality.

You come back to yourself to find Dave pressing light kisses along the side of your neck and oops, your hands are in his hair holding him here, how did that happen? He is talking quietly, probably to himself. You can only catch maybe one word in ten but what you hear makes you glad he is down at your neck and unable to see your face. You catch phrases like "so hot" and "fucking finally" and "god please yes" as he presses his hardon into your stomach. And wow, yep, the tired is gone and your dick is enthusiastically back in the game, your problems earlier tonight entirely forgotten. When he has worked his way down to your shoulder he bites down and you fade back out again with an embarrassingly high-pitched groan.

The inside of your head is still a tangle of conflicted emotions. Glee and self-loathing and lingering confusion all fighting for dominance. Distantly you feel your body shuddering under Dave's ministrations and the voice of self-loathing is becoming quieter and quieter.

When you come back your shirt is gone and Dave is toying at your nipples with fingers and tongue, wresting the most pathetic and needy sounds out of you. Your neck feels pleasantly sore and you know that you are covered with marks that you are going to have to hide at work tomorrow. Your hands grip his plush ass and it feels exactly like you imagined it would. Fantastic. But you aren't supposed to be feeling your brother so you grab fistfuls of the sheets instead. You are hard enough that you are surprised that you haven't burst through the zipper of your pants. He is playing you like a set of turntables and you are in so much trouble. Totally fucked. Emotionally, physically, and probably legally. You looked it up once in a fit of desperate self-flagellation and the prison time for the law-breaking double reacharound of statutory rape and incest could put you away for up to fifty years. You are starting to think it might be completely worth it. All the awkwardness and self-loathing and prison time might be worth this one night with your little bro. He surges up to attack your neck again, thrusting his hard-on against yours as a part of the motion.

You don't fade out again. Instead you moan like a virgin or maybe like a pornstar and fist tightly at the sheets. You want to bury your fingers in Dave's hair, run your hands up and down his back, go back to squeezing his ass, but that would be admitting defeat. That would be giving into every single fucked up incestuous thought that you ever had. So you hold the sheets like the last rope connecting you to a ship in a storm and ride the waves of pleasure that he is throwing at you.

"I'm gonna suck your dick, ok?"

You blink. You also entirely fail to do anything to prevent Dave from pushing you back to recline on the couch and putting one of your hands on his head. He pushes your unresponsive legs into a configuration that he seems to find more suitable and gets onto his hands and knees in front of you. He leans down so that his mouth is hovering right over the bulge in your jeans. 

"You seem a little braindead up there so I'm just gonna go ahead get to it."

Your fingers are stroking through his corn silk hair entirely against your will and he presses up against your hand slightly before he continues.

"Then I'm going to bed. You don't have to do anything but just sit there and let me have this, alright? I know you're freaked out and I just wanna show you that it's gonna be ok. When I'm gone you think on what I've said and what I've done or whatever. And the later if you want to return the favor… I will be more than willing." He smirks and you can no longer see the kid you raised. In his place is a teenager who is eyeing your junk with an expression that you can't describe as anything less than hunger. He _wants_ you, he really does. Holy fuck.

He pops open the button of your pants one handed, pulls down the zip, tugs it open. You are hard and it is awful. You are hard for your brother. You can't wait to feel his mouth on your dick. 

It looks like he is just as fucked up as you are and whose fault can that possibly be? You messed it all up even worse than you thought.

The knowledge that you did something to make him this way is finally enough to pull actual words out of you. "Dave, stop. Go to bed and we'll both forget this ever- aah!"

He runs his hand over your cock and even through your boxers you can feel the heat. Shit. This is what you want, but it isn't what you want. You need to stop this, you need to stop him. You want to use your hand on his head to push him off of you, away from the futon and out of your head, but he runs his tongue over your clothed dick and it turns into a gentle grip in his hair instead. _Shit_. Your hips roll up towards his mouth against your will and he gives a pleasantly surprised laugh and you are a monster.

"D-Dave. This isn’t right, you need to stop, we need to-"

"Bro. You are practically shoving me onto your dick; I am sensing some insincerity in your words here. How about you let me do my thing with minimum whining and you have your existential crisis later. Just fucking… let me have this. Ok?"

He puts his weight on one hand and uses the other to pull down the elastic of your boxers until he can get his mouth on you. It's impossible to say no to him when he is teasingly running the tip of his tongue along your length. You don't know what to do with your hand in his hair. You want to hold him still while you thrust up into his mouth, but at the same time you want to push him away.

In your indecision you do nothing. Say nothing. Your hand rests lightly on his head, fingers brushing through his hair as he works you over. The way he is very nearly worshiping your dick with his mouth combines with all the tension and frustration you have dealing with these last few months it takes you a sickeningly short time for you to start leaking pre into his mouth. Your head says "monster, monster, monster," but he hums happily, you assume because of the clear evidence of just how much he is turning you on. You are not going to last long. You are too turned on and Dave is too good. One hand works at your base as he sucks and licks at your head. He presses just so and you very nearly scream.

Your brother is not touching you with the hands of a virgin and you wonder with a sick sort of fascination where he got his experience sucking cock. Was there somebody before you? Did he practice? The idea of your brother bringing this kind of pleasure to anyone else sends a slowly-burning rage through you. He is yours, your brother, your lover, your reason for living. 

You give in.

You move your other hand to also grip his hair and thrust upward abruptly. You expect him to pull away or flinch in alarm, but he groans and his whole body relaxes like he was afraid of your rejection all this time. You could never really say no to him. 

He meets your eye, his own wide and trusting and full of (not love, not here, not like this) lust and you thrust up again. He was holding out on you, you are willing to bet that he could take you all the way down if he were so inclined. But it this point it doesn't matter if he is so inclined, because you are.

His hands rest lightly on your thighs with just enough pressure to hold himself up, not enough to prevent you from moving like you want and he groans and moans as well as he can with your dick pushing down his throat. He looks so fucking pretty sucking your cock, his lips stretched around you and a blissful expression on his face. You are going to regret what you are doing when you have time to think about it, but for now it is just too good.

You pull him all the way off of you so that he can catch a breath and he moans your name like it's the only word he knows and you are _done_. You come on his face and it is the loveliest thing you have ever seen. Your vision whites out and you distantly feel yourself collapse against the back of your couch. The only sound is a pair of panting breaths. 

"Right then." Dave's voice is startlingly crisp. He slaps his hands on his thighs in a somewhat disturbing imitation of someone walking away from a job well done (which you suppose it is from his perspective) then in a quick surge of motion he pushes away from you and off the futon. He shoots you a satisfied smirk and flashsteps into the bathroom before you can muster the will to form a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever I can be found on [tumblr](http://a-bench.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bro tries to figure out what the fuck to do with himself now.

You wake up at some ungodly hour feeling like death very, very lightly warmed over. Your brain is pounding like it's trying to break free of your skull and your stomach… ugh, probably shouldn't think about it. It would definitely be a good idea to take a piss and sleep for maybe twelve more hours. By then you will probably still feel like ass, but that's better than feeling like you could die at any moment. You start to sort of pathetically wiggle yourself towards the edge of the futon but are severely hindered by your boxers around your knees and you remember.

You fucking fucked up. Ohhh, did you fuck up. You fucked up so bad that in the future sick fires will be written in awe-struck tones about Bro Strider: the man who screwed the standards of fucked up for the rest of time and ascended to become the one true god, loved and feared by poor shits who think they fucked up but now have someone to look up to and think, "at least I didn't fuck up as bad as he fucked up."

Fuck.

Your underage brother sucked your dick and you liked it, you sick fuck. You didn't do a thing to stop it. Your token-fucking-protest doesn't even begin to count, you wanted it and you got it and if you weren't already hypothetically going to hell if such a thing exists (which you doubt) you sure as fuck would be now.

You struggle until you are face down on the futon and you think that maybe if you just lay here long enough you will suffocate and escape this whole ridiculous, awful, fucked up situation.

You have never been so at loss. Ever. And that includes the day your parents died and left you with a toddler to raise, a mountain of debt, and no income to speak of. It's pretty fucking bleak.

But now, just like then, you will come up with something and fix everything, because that is what you do. The real issue here is Dave. What Dave wants. What Dave _did_. If it were just you, just your fucked up creepy kinks, that would be one thing, but Dave is complicit too now, and you just don't know what to do with that particular revelation. You fucked up, Dave fucked up, and unless you make a move right now you will probably _continue_ to fuck up in an awful combination of gleeful fulfillment and nauseating guilt. But you _still_ don't know what to do. Every idea you come up with is worse than the last.

Eventually the pressure of your bladder overrides your desire to become one with the futon. What you need is to stop being hungover so you can actually think beyond your own misery. Ok, you're doing it. You're making it happen.

You twist around and sit up purposefully, then sway wildly as your head and stomach throb in protest (don't throw up). You inch slowly to your feet, one arm wrapped around your waist and the other clutching your head like it is the only thing holding your skull together. You aren't entirely sure whether or not this is actually the case (don't throw up, you can do it). You complete the rest of your routine mechanically. Shuffle into the bathroom and flip on the light, which hits like a pickaxe to the frontal lobe (don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up). Empty what little you have in your stomach into the sink (shit). Turn on the water and alternate between heaving into the sink and sitting on the toilet until the water is hot. You are fairly certain that you have been lower than this before, but damned if you can think of the specific instance right now.

You half expected being clean and somewhat more awake would make more of a difference in your physical state, but of course it didn't, it never does. Now instead of a filthy, exhausted, hungover wreck you are a clean, less exhausted, hungover wreck. It's better than nothing, really.

You dress in the first articles of clothing you find on the floor and snag your shades from where they fell under the futon (don't think about it) on your way to the kitchen. Sweet, dark-tinted relief. You want to try to eat something and drink a glass or ten of water, but the state of the place doesn’t make it easy. The sink is full of Dave's dishes and the fridge is stocked with food Dave likes and his clothes are strewn around on the floor with yours and you need to get the fuck out of this apartment as soon as you are ready to handle the fourteen flights of stairs down. All of your thoughts are stuck in this miserable snarl of emotions and the last thing you need is to be forcibly reminded of Dave every other fucking second. A hungover incestuous boner is literally the worst thing that could happen to you right now. You force yourself to think of something else.

Coffee might be beyond you, but you make a pot anyway (don't look at Dave's favorite mug) and scrounge up an extremely stale bag of saltines from the back of the cupboards. You are going to nurse that first cracker for maybe half an hour, then get out of the apartment. It's ten thirty in the morning and there is no way in hell that Dave will be up in the next four hours. You have time.

Then you find a few tell-tale white spots on the sheets when you go to fold up the futon and it doesn't matter if you're ready to take on the stairs or not, you need to get out of here right fucking now. And you probably need to not come back for a while.

You toss a few hundred dollars from your emergency stash on the kitchen counter for groceries, stuff a bag full of clothes, and you're out the door in maybe five minutes. Once you hit the pavement you pick a direction and walk like maybe if you push yourself hard enough you can outrun your thoughts.

Surprisingly it works for a while. You have no idea how long you have been walking and pointedly not thinking when you turn a corner at full tilt and knock some lady flat on her ass. Her hair is white-blonde and she is petite in a way that makes you feel particularly awful for knocking her over of all people in this city. You stare at each other like neither of you quite have the capacity to react to the situation until she starts giggling and you start disjointedly apologizing, poker face undoubtedly blown.

You reach down to help her back to her feet, struggling to get your facial expressions back under control. She takes your hand and pulls firmly, lifting herself a few inches off the sidewalk and nearly sending you toppling on top of her. What the fuck is this woman's deal? You finally get her upright, supporting her entire weight until she gets her legs properly beneath herself. When you finally feel like she is ready to stand on her own you let go of her arm where you were supporting her, but instead of accepting your apology and wandering off the way you want her to she staggers sideways and you have to catch her again. You think she is trying to say something as she giggles and sways in your grip, but can't get it out through the force of her laughter. It looks like you may have accidentally given some stranger brain damage. Because you weren't already having a really, really shitty day.

Then she turns so that she is laughing in your face and you smell the alcohol on her breath. Not brain damaged, just trashed in the early afternoon. Even better. The last thing that you want is to be stuck babysitting some random drunk person you found on the street, so you prop her against the nearest building to make your escape, but she has your arm in an impressively steely grip. When you try to tug away you only succeed in dragging her along, propelling her away from the wall to slam back against your side.

Any remorse you had for knocking her over is now thoroughly replaced with irritation. Running into her broke you out of your reverie and you have apparently walked off your hangover. All you want now is to find somewhere to think, maybe rent a room for a few nights so you can figure out how to get your life back under control.

"Ok, I need you to step off, lady. I have places to be and peo-umph!"

"Shoosh!" She has the hand not occupied with keeping you close pressed over your mouth. "Shooooooosh!"

You try to talk around her hand, but your words are stifled beyond comprehension.

"Wow, you're like, really buff!" she proclaims, using her non-gagging hand to squeeze your arm with gleeful appreciation. "I couldn't ask for a more attractive dude to knock me over! But a gentleman should know it's good manners to ask a leedy –oh hell– lady her name before you get her on her back! Not that I am trying to eemply –imply– that you are a gentleman!" And she giggles again and you kind of want to punch her and abscond for all that she is probably a foot shorter than you and maybe a third of your weight, but you are frozen under the perverse need to know what is going to happen next. It's like watching really, really bad porn. Somehow even though it makes you want to burn your retinas out you can't tear your eyes away out of sick fascination.

"You should prom– probably buy me coffee to apologize," she slurs happily as she links her arm with yours and drags you purposefully back in the direction you came from. You still can't believe that someone so waifish could have that good of a grip. You don't really have much of a choice but to let her manhandle you into a café just down the street unless you want to do her some actual damage. This whole interaction has had a sense of unreality and you find yourself just going along with it.

She drags you up to the counter where she rattles off her order with a speed and coherency that belies her earlier drunken discourse. She gossips with the barista like they are old friends and introduces you as "some fime –uh, fine– ass I took in off the street lookin all lonely." The barista eyes you sympathetically and you get the idea that this isn't the first time this has happened. Blondie is absolutely psychotic. She released you when during her approach of the counter and you take your opportunity to turn, ready to flashstep the fuck out of this weirdness.

"Hey." Her voice is soft and a little bit sad. There is something in the tone that stops you in your tracks and you turn to face her. "Just humor me for like half an hour. I don't want to sit in here alone."

The loneliness in her voice and the loss in her expression resonates with you and all the awful shit in your life more than you care to think about. You turn back to the counter.

\------------------------------------

Her name is Roxy and you are so glad you didn't leave. It becomes apparent almost immediately that the drunken ditz act was indeed an act. She might be more than a little buzzed ("I had just gotten out of a four hour presentation to my broad- board of directors and let me tell you I took full advantage of the post-meeting-brunch mimosas. I simply can't say nope to fresh squeezed oj!"), but she is extremely sharp. More than that, she is compelling in a way that you can't really put into words. The way that she treats each thing you say as worth elaborating on and threads humor through the stories she tells makes it seem like you could probably talk to her all day and long into the night before you even realized how much time had passed.

"So what do you do that puts you in front of a board of directors?"

"Oh, I'm a scientist. I do science and shit. That's the technical term bee tee dubs. Science and shit."

"I'll keep that in mind. I would hate to infuriate the scientific community by using less-than-precise terminology."

"See that you do! We scientists can be a vicious bunch when we feel the integrity of our profession is being threatened!"

Sarcasm-laden banter is a medium with which you are quite comfortable, and you find yourself quickly falling into the rhythm of the conversation. You talk about your DJ job and somehow she wrangles the whole puppet porn thing out of you. It's something you go out of your way to avoid revealing to strangers, but somehow she finds it both fascinating and hilarious instead of disturbing and uncomfortable. You actually have to physically wrestle her phone away from her to prevent her from looking it up right there in the café. Maybe you run and produce for a puppet porn website, but you still like to think that you are a guy with standards. You avoid going into the full details as much as possible anyway.

She talks about her daughter and their ongoing war of passive-aggression with an effusiveness that nearly has you actually, literally laughing out loud. Which is not a thing that happens. Ever. Even the mild grin you allow to show through feels sort of strange on your face.

There are awkward gaps in the conversation as she avoids talking about her job (top secret shit, Dirk. Top. Secret. Shit.) and you avoid talking about Dave, but you smooth it over together, you with stories of strange order requests (how close to human skin can you make a puppet feel? Can you make it feel warm?) and her with her bizarre adventures in motherhood (do you have any idea how hard it was to find someone willing to tattoo a pink heart on a pony?), and you get by.

She actually knows more about retro gaming than you do (not that you would admit it out loud) and that particular topic lasts you until the café kicks you out to close.

"So wanna continue this over a drink?"

"How about hell yeah??"

You have no idea where you are, so she whips out her phone and types furiously for a few minutes before shouting triumphantly and dragging you off by the hand, ranting excitedly about house liquors. You trail along behind her like a very bemused kite. You more than half expected to find yourself on the dance floor of some earsplittingly loud club given Roxy's overall demeanor, but instead she settles you into a booth at a quiet bar while she scurries off to get drinks. "I know just the thing, don't you worry your pretty little head about it!"

You have carefully avoided thinking about Dave since running into Roxy and you are pretty sure it helped. You feel a lot more calm about everything now that you have put some distance between yourself and what happened last night, although you still aren't ready to face him. Regardless you should probably tell him that you aren't really mad, just… confused and frustrated. And that you are going to be away for a few days to straighten out your thoughts. Heart in your throat with nerves you really shouldn't be feeling just contacting your brother, you turn on your phone. It chimes and vibrates frantically and shows you a wall of message notifications. Shit.

TG: do you wanna talk about it??

TG: i guess not

TG: well

TG: …

TG: just so you know

TG: i dont have any regrets about last night

TG: although i guess you do

TG: im sorry

TG: are you ignoring me?? lease dont ignore me

TG: at least tell me that you're alive

TG: bro i swear im like 30 seconds from calling the police

TG: i wont do it again i wont do anything just answer me

TG: bro please don’t hate me

The force of the guilt nearly knocks you over. The last message is dated almost four hours ago and you don't want to think about what he was probably going through all that time. How could you spend the entire day carousing with some random stranger and let your brother, your only family and friend, sit thinking you hated him. He probably thinks you're dead or that you've abandoned him. You are absolutely the biggest douchebag to ever exist. Your shades clatter on the table as you toss them aside to rub at your face. Just when you thought you were feeling better you feel worse than ever. Monster, monster, monster.

"Are you ok?"

You suddenly become aware of the warmth of Roxy leaning against your side. While you were perfecting your 2X facepalm-self-hate combo she had placed a glass full of something on the rocks in front of you and you grab it like it's your only hope for salvation. She is sipping at something hot pink in a martini glass while she eyes you with a combination of earnest curiosity and concern. You toss back your drink in one go and it burns pleasantly as it goes down. You aren't sure how you are going to deal with this without talking it out at least a little and there is no one else to dump your troubles on than Roxy.

"I told you about my kid, right?"

"You mentioned him."

"I…" How much can you say without getting yourself and Dave into trouble? Having some unbiased advice would be helpful, but you also would really like to avoid prison time. You flag down a server and ask for another whiskey.

"Me and Dave– he's not my son, he's my brother –are having some problems. A lot of them are my fault, but some of them are his and last night things sort of came to a head–" haha, puns, "–and now I don't know what to do."

You press your glass full of slowly melting ice to your forehead and Roxy wraps her arms around you, cooing sympathetic noises in your ear.

"I really just don't know what to do. Raising a kid is hard. It's hard and no one understands."

"I understand."

"You think you do, but I promise you don't."

"My girl is in the teenage years too, I know what they are like. And I know what you have to do and I think you know too."

"Well yeah, the obvious solution would be to talk to him, but I'm pretty sure in this case it will just make things worse." Really it probably will. How the hell are you ever supposed to look at his face again without remembering what it looked like covered in your- nope, nope, nope, now is not the time. You are ruined forever and you want to see him and make it right more than anything, but it will never be right so maybe it's better that you never see him again instead. Not thinking like this sure was nice while it lasted.

"Dirk. What the hell else can you do?"

There it is. The crux of the matter. There isn't anything else you can do but talk to him and hope it doesn’t all go to shit. Even if you decide that it would be best to be apart you still need to talk to him about it first. You're trapped.

"Give yourself one more night, and then go deal with it. There is nothing worse than shutting your kid out, I can promise you that. Whatever it is if you really love each other you can figure it out."

If only she knew.

"Alright. You're right." You pick your phone up from where you shoved it across the table.

TT: I'm fine. We'll talk tomorrow.

"Well in that case tonight let's just get really drunk and escape our child-rearing angst a little longer."

She drains her pink concoction in a long, practiced swallow and you toss back your second whiskey.

"Sounds good to me."


	4. Chapter 4

You stand in front of you apartment door for maybe fifteen minutes trying to force yourself to go inside. Your Conversation with Dave is inevitable and important and all that shit, but that doesn’t mean you are eager to face him. You nearly drop your keys when the buzz of your phone just about startles you out of your skin.

TG: you *better* be inside that apratment, mister responsible older brother!

TG: shit, *apartment

You smile thinly to yourself as you clumsily fit the apartment key into the lock. You might be on the verge of death by nerves and hungover for the second consecutive morning, but at least Roxy has your back. Of course if she knew the actual details of the issues between you and Dave she would probably have you arrested, but it's the sentiment that counts. You might have stood there all day if she hadn't texted. There is something about having someone supporting you and, more importantly, urging you on, makes your upcoming conversation much easier to approach.

You take a deep breath, shove the door open, and immediately step back outside to make sure you didn't come out on the wrong floor or something. But no, the number on the door is 1413, like it always is.

After spending a long moment staring apprehensively at the closed door you walk back inside as cautiously as you would if the apartment were wired with explosives. Your heart is in your throat and your hands are actually trembling. You have never been faced with such an utterly unnatural scene in your entire life and you have seen all the porn. All of it.

The apartment is completely and utterly spotless, a situation which is wholly without precedent. The place was a wreck from the moment you moved in and has remained that way the last eighteen years.

You can really only think of two things that this could possibly mean: either Dave actually cleaned on purpose, or all your junk was stolen by some extremely thorough and tidy robbers. You honestly aren't sure which of the two is less likely.

The tiny entryway is completely clear, the door framed by two neat stacks of shoes– Dave's on one side and yours on the other. You marvel at the tiled floor you hadn't even known existed before. 

You walk into the hallway like it is covered in shards of glass rather than ruthlessly scrubbed and sorted. The whole situation has thrown you even further off your game, something you wouldn't have thought to be possible a few minutes before, and honestly you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. There has to be something more going on here, some revenge scheme or maybe an ironic prank. But as you walk from the hall, though the living room and into the kitchen on silent feet there is no explosion of puppets or rain of cheetos or anything else. No traps that you can see, nothing conspicuously out of place. It's just… immaculate.

Which means that Dave actually cleaned the entire apartment top to bottom in the twenty-four hours you were gone. It looks like your departure brought out some sort of cleaning mania. The sight of the kitchen leaves you hovering somewhere between impressed and terrified. It must have taken him hours. You're surprised it didn't take days. If you'd thought about it before now you would have figured the only way to clear the place out would have been to just burn down the whole apartment and start from scratch.

Looking back he had a similar fit once a year or so ago when you got pissed at him for starting a fight at school, but all he cleaned then was the living room. While neither of you ever brought it up, you are reasonably sure that he was trying to apologize without actually saying the words. You and Dave are almost never really at odds. You _strife _a lot, sure, but fights and strifes are really incomparable. You agree on pretty much everything; have the same interests. There is no reason for you to be pissed at each other. Annoyed yes– pissed no.__

Although maybe you would have started some arguments if you'd realized that this would be the result.

After wandering for a while –not marveling, striders don't marvel– observing the various features of the apartment that had previously been covered with random junk, you find yourself entirely out of excuses put off talking to Dave once again. You are already in the apartment, you know what you need to say. This is it. You have also felt the buzz of text messages several times throughout your exploration, and the knowledge that Roxy is either nagging or looking for updates on the situation (or both) is no small amount of motivation. You square your shoulders, mentally check that your patented Strider deadpan is firmly in place, and walk towards the hallway that leads to Dave's room. 

You stand outside the door, fist raised to knock in irritating symmetry with the way you stood outside the door to the apartment. When did you start being such a huge fucking pussy? This is absolutely pathetic. Just knock on the fucking door, bro. Be the adult. Deal with your situation. Talk to your brother. Just talk, no fucking whatsoever. Don't think about the sounds he makes or his pretty cock-sucking lips or the way he shuddered when you pulled his- well fuck.

You can't do this. There is no way you can face him without fucking up even worse than you already have. Now that you've had a taste of what it could be like you can't get thoughts of fucking your brother out of your head. After That Night all you want to do is fuck him on his bed or against a wall or any of a wide variety of vertical and horizontal surfaces. You want to suck his dick and tease him until he screams your name and tie him to the bed and show him how much you cherish him. You want to fuck him slow and sweet until he sobs with sensation, then fuck him fast and hard until he forgets how to speak. And even worse than that now you know he wants it too. You've tried and failed to forget the words he whispered in your ear That Night, and in this as in everything he wants the same things that you want. The knowledge eats at you. It burns.

You sag back against the opposite wall, then slide down to sit on the floor, your hair clenched in your fists and your cool entirely, infuriatingly gone.

What are you doing here? What can you possibly hope to accomplish? All that's likely to happen is you do or say something wrong and then Dave will either hate you or fuck you. Maybe you should just turn and walk out. Put this off another night, think about it more. He never responded to your message last night so he might not even be here. You don't know where else he could be, though. He never talks about school friends or anyone really. On the other hand with the way you have been trying to hide yourself away from him for the last you don't even know how long he could be the most popular guy in school and you wouldn't know. And really why the fuck would he stay here in this apartment that probably reminds him of you as much as it reminds you of him when he most likely thinks that you hate him. There is no way he is going to stick around looking at all your shit and thinking about-

_Buzz buzz!_

But there is nothing worse than shutting your kid out and what would waiting hope to accomplish either? Nothing is going to change in a day or in a week and maybe not even in a month. Any waiting would be to your benefit, not his, and you need to put Dave first.

Fuck it. 

Just… fuck it. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

You stand and knock in one smooth motion, leaving no time for hesitation.

The complete lack of any sort response whatsoever is probably the most anticlimactic thing that has ever happened to you. 

There isn't even the sound of cloth shifting which you would expect if he were trying to hide from you. Now that you have burnt up all your pent up nerves you notice that there is no light on under the door. He might be asleep, it's still fairly early in teenage boy time. 

But he has learned well over the years to wake up instantly for any sound at his door and now that you think about it you don't remember seeing his favorite shoes by the entryway. You weren't really serious when you considered that he might have left, but it's looking alarmingly likely. 

You actually go so far as to press your ear to the door, an incredibly uncool act to top off your incredibly uncool day. Dave makes you uncool. It is worth being uncool to be back on good terms with him, though. You are also distantly relieved that there is no one here to see you like this. Striders do not act like nervous, love-struck virgins. It's just not done. 

You hear nothing, not the sound of breathing, not the sound of someone shifting in their sleep, silence. You want to just lay face down on the couch and be miserable for a while, but you got this far. You can finish what you came here for.

By now any Strider cool you might have had is long, long gone. No need to stand on your nonexistent dignity now. You put your hand on the doorknob, take a deep breath, and open the door the tiniest crack you can manage as silently as possible. His room is just as immaculate as the rest of the apartment. So is his bed. 

He's not here.

He's not in this apartment.

All of the space inside of you that had been full of roiling nerves and emotional turmoil has been replaced with a cold sort of emptiness. 

You walk into Dave's room without really noticing you are doing so. The smashed remains of his iPhone sit on his desk and you distantly note that he probably never even knew that you were coming back. 

You sit heavily on his neatly made bed to think or maybe because you aren't sure your legs want to support you anymore and hear the crunch of paper. It tears a little as you pull it out from under you with an intense feeling of foreboding. 

hey bro   
i dont know if you are ever going to see this  
since I dont know if you are coming back here  
but I dont want to stay in this shithole alone  
im going to new york to visit my friend rose  
i dont want to stay there but if you don't want me around…  
i guess i understand  
i guess you can find me there if you want if not… ill figure it out  
bye

The balled-up note lands neatly in Dave's trash can and your fist makes a not-so-neat hole in the wall over Dave's bed.

You fucking do want him around! You want him around right fucking now so you can tell him that you will never hate him, never fear him. What the hell were you thinking? He's a Strider, of course he would react to the whole situation the same way you did, by running away from it. But even if you had thought that he might leave you never would have expected that he could have run away so… drastically. 

What if he likes it there? What if he doesn't want to come back? What if by leaving him for a day you lost him forever? You feel sick and betrayed and lost. How the hell could he do this to you? How could he throw himself at you and then take off across the fucking country? The hypocrisy of the situation is not lost on you. Apparently it was fine for you to leave him, but the second he leaves you it's the end of the world. And yes, you know you are being unfair, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

You want him back. You don't even care any more about things being the way they were. You just want him back in any capacity he wants. And you want it now.

TT: So.

TT: Roxy.

TT: You're heading home in a few days, right?

TT: I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me a lift to New York?

TG: what??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, writer's block got me good. As ever I can be found [on tumblr](http://a-bench.tumblr.com). Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

At some point during your day together yesterday Roxy explained that she was only in Texas for a few days, much to your disappointment at the time. She came to Houston to present her research to the heads of the oddly shady research company she works for. You call it shady because they seem to have a rather unusual amount of disposable cash for a research institution, although it could be that Roxy is particularly important in the company's hierarchy; she was impressively close-mouthed about her job. And it's not like you were going to push for information. Glass houses and all that. Either way, Roxy has access to some luxuries that a scientist probably shouldn't have.

What you're trying to get at here is that she flew south in a private jet. 

The whole situation is almost supernaturally convenient, that just a day before you have an abrupt need to go to New York you meet someone who can quickly and conveniently get you to New York, but you are hardly going to complain. Instead of having to go through the trouble of getting a last minute plane ticket you can walk onto a private jet and be on your way without even having to print a boarding pass.

You do have to wait a day for her conference or whatever it is to end, but Roxy is more than willing to give you the lift you need. You hash out the details over text and before you know it it's the next day and you are loading your luggage into the back of Roxy's limo (seriously, what the fuck is up with this company she works for?).

You didn't have enough time (or the brainpower) to fret over what you are going to say to Dave once you get to see him in your rush to set up a hiatus message on your website and find someone to cover your ass at the club, but as you settle into the limo and see the aggressively curious look on Roxy's face you know that you're going to face it whether you want it or not. You knew you were going to be facing an overly friendly inquisition over the course of this trip and the time has come. You school your features into your most expressionless poker face and try to make your deep calming breath as subtle as possible.

"So Dirk." 

"So Roxy." Your voice is as resigned as hers is intrigued. Not resigned, bland. Because you are in perfect control of yourself and your life. Right. You stifle another sigh.

"I gotta be honest with you, I really didn't think that your family issues were this… issue-tastic."

"I tried to tell you."

"There isn't another kid in the universe who would up and leave the state over an argument, I don't even know what to say to that." She still sounds like she can't quite believe the situation she has found herself in. You are right there with her.

"Yeah, I didn't see it coming either. I underestimated how impulsive the kid can be."

"What he did was pretty fucking impulsive, I'll give you that." You shrug at her, still preoccupied with trying not to let your expression give away just how torn up you are about everything. "So where exactly are you going?"

"I did some digging around on his computer last night. His friend lives in a nowhere town called Rainbow Falls so I was thinking I could catch a cab from-" she is staring at you with an expression of pure disbelief. You mentally go over everything you just said, terrified that she somehow figured out exactly what it is between you and Dave, and find nothing odd. "What?"

"What… what did you say your brother's friend's name was?" Her voice is wobbly with confusion or shock or some similar emotion and you are starting to feel fairly concerned. What the hell did you say?

"Her name is Rose, Rose Lal…" it hits you like a brick to the face. It's all you can do to not physically recoil from the realization. "Oh, what the fuck." There is a certain level of coincidence that is just too much for a person to deal with without strapping on rocket boots and blasting straight off the handle. This is impossible, it's absurd, and you are an idiot for not putting two and two together. The silence in the limo stretches on as you and Roxy stare at each other in stunned disbelief. You are distantly grateful for your shades, because you’re sure your eyes are cartoon-character-wide. Hers certainly are. There has got to be some meddlesome god or trickster demon pulling strings here, because this shit is too absurd to be believed.

"Dirk Strider. Dave Strider. Oh my god. How… How did I not…" She reaches over to the sideboard absently and pours you both very tall glasses of some deep amber liquor. You swallow down about half the glass without noticing what you are doing, and the abrupt burn of the whiskey is enough to pull you out of your stupor.

"Well I'll be damned." Your voice is impressively steady if a bit hoarse. Not that the initial shock has faded you are feeling pretty calm, probably because the whole situation is so ridiculous that you have transcended shocked and come all the way back around to mild, understated interest. It is the penultimate irony, and irony is your thing. You got this. As Roxy sips at her own drink she seems to come to the same conclusion. Mental freakout time is over, time to pretend this is what you planned all along, because if you look at the situation too hard you don't know what will happen.

"Well, this makes matters a bit more convenient. Would you like a ride from the airport to my home?"

"I would be honored." You are talking like two acquaintances discussing the weather rather than two friends who just had the ultimate deus ex machina dumped in their laps like a sack of the world's most unexpected garbage, but it's a conversational format you are comfortable with. You are fluent in lies and bullshit and Roxy seems to speak the same language. You chat idly about the town of Rainbow Falls and New York as a whole until you roll to a stop. Fortunately there is more than enough space back here to talk around the elephant in the limo that is the overwhelming coincidence of your acquaintance. 

The boarding process is even faster and easier than you hoped it would be, it takes maybe half an hour from the time you step out of the limo to be settled in one of the implausibly comfortable seats on the jet, Roxy seated happily beside you. The leg room is absurd, the carpet plush, and the entertainment options unspeakably vast. You are ruined for air travel for the rest of your life. You flip idly through the safety brochure (comforting to know that some things are the same in public and private planes) while you wait for departure in an unspoken agreement to hold off on your big conversation until you are in the air. The takeoff is the smoothest you have ever experienced. 

As soon as the fasten seatbelt light switches off Roxy begins. "Can you tell me what it is you are fighting about?"

"I… No."

"I didn't think so." She sighs. "Well how about this. I'll make sure that you two get some time alone as soon as you get to the house and if there is anything I can do to help…"

"Thank you." You can't remember the last time you sounded so sincere. Maybe never. Roxy is really something else, you can't believe that you were lucky enough to meet her.

"You sound like a man resigned to the gallows, lighten up! What's the worst that could happen?" The cheer in her voice is so pleasantly unexpected that it is almost enough to lighten your mood. Almost. Instead you give a humorless bark of laughter. 

"The worst? He decides to stay with you and Rose. Or go to Washington and John." You can't quite manage to keep the bitterness out of your voice.

"Oh. Is it really that bad?"

"It really, really is." Maybe you have lost command of your voice, but at least your poker face is still in place. You still have some modicum of control over your life, however laughably transparent.

"If I can do _anything_ -"

"I know." You don't want to hear her say it. You don't deserve her kindness, you really, really don't. You are an asshole and a… you don't want to think about all the things you are. Chances are good everything is going to hell in a few hours and you hope you don't drag her down with you.

"Ok." With that she turns on some mindless action flick on the big screen TV at the front of the passenger cabin, apparently as done talking about it as you are. Or at least understanding how done you are and dropping it. You close your eyes and sag back against your seat, exhausted from your conversation however brief and from the last few days. Weeks. 

At this point you are mostly just glad to be out of options. Your eagerness to have everything resolved some way is almost enough to outweigh your apprehension. You can no longer run, can no longer hide from your problems. Unless you want to lose Dave forever all you can do now is follow Roxy to her house, have your private chat with Dave, and hope you don't fuck it up. You aren't even sure what fucking it up would entail any more. That's up to Dave really. You have mostly resigned yourself to your lust and his… whatever it is he has. When you talk, you know that whatever he wants he can have. That was really where this was going to end up from the beginning, you just put it off for a little while. From the first time you held his tiny infant self in your arms he has owned you wholly and completely, that never changed. Whatever he wants.

When you open your eyes again it's because the plane is descending. You can't believe you managed to sleep with all you had to think about, but it has been an exhausting few days. You get progressively nervous as the plane lands, taxies, and comes to a stop. It's only a twenty minute drive from the airport (a tiny, private thing) to Roxy's house. Your big moment is almost here and you don't think you have ever been so anxious in your life. You had thought you peaked walking into your apartment, then again opening Dave's door, but this tops it all. 

By the time you are ready to disembark you are in a daze of swirling thoughts and apprehension. You think that if you knew what you really wanted out of this you would be less twisted up, but you don't know, you just don't know. You are in the back of a car and driving through a thick forest before you are really aware that you have been moving. You distantly remember Roxy prodding you along, but really the entire experience went by far too quickly for your liking. You aren't ready, you can't do this, you are going to fuck up and Dave is going to hate you (more than he already does) and then you are going to be alone and without the only person who matters to you. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Roxy is talking to you, but her words are a distant buzz against the discord of your thoughts. You aren't ready, but you are never going to be ready. You are scared, but you are never not going to be scared. You unconsciously square your shoulders as the road takes a bend and a boxy-modern house comes into view.

Dave is standing on the porch, a girl of about his age who resembles Roxy so strongly that she might as well be a clone standing beside him with a hand on his shoulder. 

Dave.

Oh god, Dave. Now that you can see him all the nerves and paranoia slide away. All that you want is to know he's ok, that he still cares, that you can still be cool. You are out of the car and striding towards where he is standing before it has come to a complete stop. You definitely don't run to the house, but it is a close thing. Because _Dave_.

You jerk to a stop just before the steps, almost close enough to touch him if you both reached out. And you want to reach out so badly, but his face is coldly expressionless and you were right, he does hate you, he's going to stay here and leave you alone, oh god. You make sure that your expression is as schooled as his as you stand, heart in your throat. 

Rose whispers something in his ear and turns to walk inside. The car had continued around the side of the house once it let you out. You are together for the first time since That Night. You want to do _something_ , but you don’t know what. You are both silent, staring, taking each other in and waiting for someone to break the silence.

"Bro, I-" "Dave, I-" You both start and stop at the same moment. You missed him so much.

You are frozen again. You don't know how to talk straight to him, don't know how to break out of the web or irony and denial that you wove around your relationship. He give in first. You knew he would, you know him. More impatient than you, more driven in all his youth.

"Let's take a walk." You are the only person in the world who would be able to hear the tension in his voice, but it’s there. He's just as wound up over everything as you are. Consciously you knew this, but hearing it, seeing it in the tightness of his stride puts you more at ease. His shoulder brushes against your arm as he walks past you away from the house, and what can you do but follow?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: they do very little actual talking.
> 
> As always I can be found and contacted on [tumblr](http://a-bench.tumblr.com).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bro and Dave have a deep, meaningful conversation full of sincerity and genuine emotional release.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, not really.

The woods are surprisingly clear and you have to walk for a good five minutes before Roxy's house is completely out of sight. Eventually Dave comes to a halt in what you would call a clearing if this were a forest that actually had underbrush. Instead it's more of a place with fewer trees than everywhere else.

Neither of you have said anything yet, and the silence is starting to get uncomfortable. You still aren't sure what to say and you doubt he does either. You are probably both waiting for the other to speak first, and in that case you are going to be standing here in silence for a long, long time.

But at the same time you are more calm than you have been in days, finally feeling like you have your feet under you. You were so wound up with worry over what to say and what to do that you forgot that Dave is… Dave. No matter how crazy things might get, no matter how out of control your life might be, he is still your little brother, the only person in the world who matters, and you almost let your stupid concerns about society and propriety get in the way. You almost lost him, and for what? For giving you the one thing you couldn't let yourself want but that you really, really wanted anyway. And when the fuck did you ever care about propriety and society anyway? Time to make a move.

Keeping your face carefully blank, you turn and sit cross-legged with your back to a tree. You're tired and completely out of fucks to give. It feels vaguely wrong to give Dave the advantage of speed and height that sitting implies, but you aren't here to strife. You're here to talk. Theoretically. When you glance up at him he is staring with ill-concealed unease. You allow a single eyebrow to arch above the rim of your shades and he slowly sits a short distance away from you with a crunching of leaves.

"I'm sorry," you both say at the same time. This simultaneous speaking thing had better not become a habit. Dave is your everything because he gets you, but there are limits to these things.

The two of you go back to silent staring and you sigh mentally. This is stupid, you are never going to get anything done like this. You jerk your chin up slightly and he takes the gesture as you intended, scooting forward a few inches. Then at sight of your re-arched eyebrow continues to scoot until your knees are touching.

You take a breath to speak and hold up a hand, stopping Dave before he can chorus with you again.

"What do you want, little man?"

"I-" he cuts himself off, probably to ensure his tongue can't run off before his head catches up, bites his lip with thought (oh no, he's cute), then starts again, this time with a distinct tone of determination. "I want you. I've always wanted you."

And it’s as easy as that.

You move at the same time, Dave to grab at your arm and you to gently cup his cheek. He feels so warm and soft and *there* against your palm. He leans into your touch and you use it to guide him forward until he climbs into your lap, knees pressed up against your ribs.

The weight of him against you feels like heaven. You missed him when you were at odds and felt like the world's biggest asshole. You didn't realize just how bad it was until you got him standing before you. You are not going to make the same mistakes driving him away again. Your fingers tighten slightly at the thought of what you almost lost and he inhales sharply as though startled out of his own reverie.

Then you are on each other like two armies clashing, like galaxy's colliding, like it's the end of the world and this is your last moment together. His lips burn against yours, his hands slide up to your hair, pulling you down into him and keeping your thoughts from drifting away again.

Not that they could. Dave's initial confession sent a surge of blood rushing south and the pressure of his (perfectly plush) ass all up on your lap has done the opposite of alleviate that situation. Your mouth and hands and thoughts are full of Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave. You want to touch and taste every inch of him and now you can.

Maybe not *right* now, though. You don't want him scratched up by sticks and shit on the forest floor, and you are by now entirely reassured that there's no hurry. You can do this again and again and again. You can tease from him every noise he can make, every sensation he can feel.

Your arms are wrapped tightly around him like you could lose him again at any moment and he is pressing against you like he is trying to phase into your skin. His mouth is sloppy against yours, desperate and wildly different from calculated heat of That Night. Every motion of your tongue has him gasping, press of your hands has him whining in the back of his throat. His hands clutch desperately at the hair at the base of your skull while yours wrap around his back, holding him tight against you.

Your shades keep clacking together, but you can't be bothered to do anything about it, can't imagine taking your hand off him for the seconds it would take you to cast them aside. He feels amazing, you feel amazing, everything is amazing. You feel so light that you could float away, all the worries of the past few months of poorly concealed lust and days of even more poorly concealed panic drifting away. You have officially thrown the last fuck you have to give into the breeze. You can no longer be bothered with holding yourself back, with holding Dave back, with holding anything back. You are going to touch your little bro's dick in these woods and it is going to be amazing.

You shift your arms from where they were wrapped around his waist to grip his ass and pull him sharply against you, making him moan. He pushes his pelvis into yours to get impossibly closer and tugs your hair to position your kiss, making soft little noises all the while. It is unbearably hot.

After more time than you can possibly remember passes, your kisses begin to slow, the pace shifting from desperately frenzied, to slow and passionate. Eventually they trail off all together, leaving you with foreheads pressed together breathing each other's air.

After a long moment to catch your breath Dave leans back slightly, moving one arm from where it is still wrapped around your neck. You can feel him trembling slightly as he lightly grasps the arm of your shades. Your nod of agreement would be imperceptible to anyone but him, but he knows and that's what makes him Dave, what makes him yours. He folds them neatly before tossing them to the ground out of the way and repeating the process with his own shades.

Slowly he raises his eyes to meet yours.

And somehow it is the most intimate thing that has ever happened to you. You can count on one hand how many times you have been eye to uncovered eye with Dave and still have fingers left over. Without shades the hurt and raw passion in his eyes is as clear as if he were shouting it in your ear. From his expression you imagine he is finding the same thing to be true of you.

"Dave, I'm so sorry." Your voice is hoarse and shaky.

"Me too, Bro."

You move unbearably slowly back to press your lips chastely to his and it is all so sweet and so right that you almost feel that you could cry.

Or push into him and fuck him and claim him and burn into your skin and his that you belong to each other. You've never been very good at deciphering your emotions.

But that train of thought is entirely derailed when Dave begins pressing gentle kisses down the side of your neck and you tilt your head back to give him room. When he reaches your collar bone he sucks lightly then nibbles with a gently scrape of teeth. You're pretty sure you groan, but you are too overwhelmed with lust and emotion to be entirely sure.

Your hands are actually trembling as you reach between your bodies to get at the button of his jeans. It parts easily and Dave sighs with relief at the decreased pressure. The sigh immediately becomes a gasp when you slip your hand between jeans and boxers. His fingers dig into your shoulders through your shirt as his back arches.

And you haven't really done anything yet.

You begin to move your hand as well as you can, but you don't have much leverage between the confines of his pants and the way your bodies are pressed together. As much as you are loath to have a single inch of him that could be touching you not touching you, some sacrifices must be made for the sake of sexual progress.

You press your free palm against his chest until he begins to slowly fall back. As much as you would like to see all of him, you really don't want his back scratched up. Unless he's into that and and you were doing the scratching, because _that_ – you're getting sidetracked. At any rate, this is going to be a clothes-on adventure.

Once he is flat on his back, knees hooked over your still-crossed legs and arms relaxed above his head you pause and look, really _look_. He's beautiful, your bro. His red eyes burn into yours with an intensity that takes your breath away. He's slim but still strong, his white-blond hair glowing against the ground. You brush a strand of it off his forehead with gentle reverence.

Your hand moves down, tracing the softness of his cheek, the curve of his throat, the length of his ribs. As your hands move down Dave's breathing picks up. By the time you reach the flat plane of his stomach he has his lower lip tight between his teeth to stifle the needy whine that traces through each breath. When your fingers brush the waistband of his boxers his eyes squeeze shut and his head tips back like he's too overcome to watch. When you dip your hand beneath the elastic he cries out softly and you surge forward to capture the sound with your lips.

You hover over him on your knees with one hand planted by his head. His arms come up to wrap around your neck as you kiss him gently and your other hand frees him from his boxers. He whines softly against your lips as you run your thumb over the head of his dick.

You continue to kiss him and work at his length too gently to really get him off until he is writhing underneath you, each inhale a gasp and each exhale a moan. You are no longer really kissing, more like breathing against each other's mouths, but it is wonderful all the same. When you think he can no longer handle the teasing grip you have, you release him entirely. He growls your name and thrusts his hips, chasing your hand. You studiously ignore the pressure in your own pants in favor of moving down his body.

You slip out of his grip around your neck and move so that your mouth is hovering over his cock in one smooth motion. Dave snatches at the air where your head used to be then shifts so that he can tangle his fingers in your hair. You wonder distantly what happened to your hat.

Then you adjust the angle of his dick and sink all the way down until your nose is pressed against the skin of his lower stomach. Dave's back arches as he fights to thrust up, but the hand you have on his hip keeps him pressed to the ground. You can't see his face, but you are fairly sure that his face is contorted into a silent scream.

You stop wasting time and get down to business, curling your lips around your teeth and bobbing your head up and down in a steady rhythm. Your free hand runs up and down his ribs soothing and feeling what you can't see.

Dave doesn’t last long after that. He calls out your name in a choked voice and you pull back to suck on the tip of his dick and then he spills into your mouth. You swallow, tuck him back into his boxers, then sit back against the tree to catch your breath.

Damn that was satisfying. There is nothing quite like the feeling of fulfilling the product of endless fantasies. You can't wait to do it again.

Once he has recovered enough to regain voluntary movement he reaches unsteadily for the bulge in your pants, but you gently swat his hand away.

"Fair turnaround little Bro."

"But-"

"Let's go home." You allow him to see a small smile. "Then we'll… continue where we left off."

He nods with the barest hint of a smile in return before turning to lead you out of the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking there will be two or three more chapters. Hopefully I won't take as long to write them as I did this one. 
> 
> As per usual I can be found on [tumblr](http://a-bench.tumblr.com).


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave and Bro make it back home.

Not wanting to wait for the ancient, sluggish elevator, you opt for the stairs: luggage, fatigue, and all. Every step is a mountain. You're strung out with the exhaustion of not having properly slept in over a week, the stress of dealing with Roxy post-woods, and wanting to just get to the end of this whole ordeal. The ten story climb takes very nearly the last dregs of your energy. Dave, dragging his feet wordlessly up the stairs next to you, looks to be in about the same state. Never before has any Strider looked as pathetic as the pair of you. 

At least the end is finally near. All you have to do is make it to your apartment and you can finally relax. You can finally stop stressing. All of the uncertainty and worry has been worked through as much as a pair of closemouthed assholes are going to be able to. This is the final countdown.

What you want now is to open that door, drop your luggage into the entryway of your apartment, slam Dave against the door and kiss him until he can't stand. What you are probably going to do is pass the fuck out. You have a lot of raging passion that has been thoroughly smothered by a bone-deep need to sleep. It has been a long week, and this has been a very, very long day.

All that you have done since the woods feels blurry and unreal, like everything that happened between your decision to see this thing through and your imminent arrival at your apartment was outside of time. Your standout memories are brief flashes: strained conversation with Roxy's daughter, begging the customer service lady for a flight, any flight, out of New York, Dave sagging against you half asleep as you wait for a taxi.

You haven't really said anything to each other since your escape from Roxy's. Both of you are overwrought and tired and what else is there to say, anyway? You both know why you're running home, and you both know what you want. You'll get it and then things, you suspect, will go more or less back to normal. A Strider version of normal anyway. Likely even better than the normal of the last while. You would be lying to yourself if you didn't admit it hasn't been entirely comfortable between the two of you for a very long time. Both of you knew that there was something going on and neither of you felt confident enough to do or say anything about it. With that tension gone, you'll be able to spend time together as brothers again. Between time spent like lovers. You hope.

You are startled from your reverie by Dave grabbing a handful of the back of your shirt and you start, looking around a bit confused. You were about to keep walking right past your floor and you shoot him the Strider equivalent of a sheepish grin, a subtle twitch of the corner of your mouth, as you step into the hallway. In a trend that you hope stops here, it take you a couple of tries to get the damn door unlocked. You shoulder it open and trudge through, dropping your bags with an enormous sigh of relief. It feels like thousands of pounds of weight fall away rather than a backpack and a small sports duffel. Feeling at once elated and unbearably exhausted, you and sag against the wall of the hall. Finally, over.

Dave follows you in, kicking the door shut behind him with only a small fraction of his usual force and accuracy. His bags join yours on the floor and he topples into you, his weight helping to keep you upright. For a moment you both stand there supporting each other and reveling in the feeling of being home and together. He tries to kiss you, but can't quite reach and settles for pressing a kiss to the underside of your jaw. You wrap your arms around him and he clings to your shirt, face pressed into your chest. You close your eyes and hold him close. If either of you sniffle a little the other carefully doesn't notice.

After a few lifetimes of standing there finally, finally being able to just hold him, feel his warmth, hear him breathe, you sigh.

"Nap?" you ask.

"Yes," he agrees. "Nap."

That decided he pulls away with more energy than he has exhibited since leaving Roxy's place. Without having to look he laces his fingers with yours and pulls you along towards his room. You trail behind, weaving a bit with tiredness. The entire apartment is as clean as you left it which serves to contribute to aura of unreality you have been feeling all day. You had hoped that getting home would get rid of that, but it looks like you are going to have to sleep it off.

Again he kicks the door shut behind you both. He gives your hand a squeeze before dropping it to strip down to his boxers. You want to eye him up while he is so undressed, but you are too drained to give any more than a vague appreciation. There will be plenty of time to show him just how much you like the way he looks (as well as everything else about him) later. In great detail. With your tongue. Even that image isn't enough to get your dick more than just a little bit interested. You yawn until your jaw cracks as you follow his lead.

Even if Dave were trying to make something sexual out of it you don't think you would be able to do anything about it. You bite your lip and think towards the morning. There will be more than enough time to get him back under you then, and Dave doesn't start school again for a few more weeks. Plenty of time. You are both tired beyond innuendo and at ease with each other in a way that at least for now transcends the rush of feelings you expected from finally getting home.

Dave falls into bed like a felled tree, not even bothering with blankets. It's still hot enough in Texas that with your shared body heat you won't really need it. It looks to you like he is asleep the instant his head hit the pillow. You toss your clothes down on top of Dave's and climb in behind him, pushing at him until you are comfortable. He makes the perfect little spoon. You fit together like puzzle pieces, his knees and hips slotted with yours, your nose buried in his hair, breathing him in.

Wrapped up in each other, you sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave and Bro do the do and, for once, no one feels shitty about it.

You wake slowly, drifting into consciousness like you’re breaking the surface of smooth water. It's unfamiliar, but nice compared to your usual abrupt awakening. You can still feel the gentle movement that woke you, and you are somehow unbothered by it. Any other morning the slightest motion would have you up and alert in an instant, but your feeling of contentment has sunk deep into your bones. You don't remember ever feeling this warm and just… good.

You are about to let yourself sink back into the soft comfort of sleep when another stifled motion lets you finally put together what exactly is going on. You jerk awake, the sheets you had pulled up in the night that had been a comfort suddenly tangling. "Dave," you breathe, not sure if you want to tell him to stop or urge him on or something else altogether, but by then his hand is already in your boxers and any words that you might have had are gone. Instead you make a little noise that's half contentment and half protest and struggle to sit up.

Dave reaches up underneath the sheet to put one hand like a brand on your chest over your heart and you fall back boneless. His other hand is pulling down the waistband of your boxers and pulling you out. You aren't hard or anything, but it certainly isn't going to take long with the way Dave is feeling you up. On top of that it was only yesterday that you were fucking on a forest floor. This role reversal, Dave between your legs with you lying back helpless, has your interest spiking. The memory of walking out of the forest the day before without getting off is heady. You are a little lightheaded with how fast your pulse is starting to pound.

He moves his hand slowly as he smothers your thighs and stomach with gentle kisses, waiting with uncharacteristic patience for you to finish waking up. His hand feels wonderful, but it is quickly becoming not nearly enough as you come out of your startled, half asleep stupor. While you’re starting to get hard and feeling ready for a little more stimulation, he doesn't seem interested in doing anything other than what he is doing now: worshiping every inch of you that he can reach with his lips and ignoring the one place you need him most. You want to tell him that you are very awake, thank you, and that he should maybe get this show on the road, but that is just as likely to startle him off as it is to urge him on. You bite your lip to hold back a groan that is as much want as it is frustration.

You try again to push yourself up onto your elbows and again he presses you back down to your back with a barely there chuckle. You definitely don't whine aloud, but you think it. You want to look at him; gaze into his eyes as he goes down on you. It feels like you haven't properly seen him in weeks and weeks and you just want to… you just want all of him.

Unfortunately for your libido Dave wants to be the boss right now. All you can do is clench your fists and grit your teeth and try to think of other things than your half remembered memories of the first time Dave did this. The heat of his mouth and the press of his tongue, the suction and pressure. "Shhhhhhit," you hiss as Dave tightens his hand incrementally.

As much as you are starting to enjoy yourself more and more with every moment, on one level this isn't really how you wanted this to go. You are starting fresh here. Building something new. And you wanted to build it on level ground, as equals. Face to face, lips meeting lips, slow passion, all that clichéd bullshit that you had never gone in for until there was suddenly someone you wanted to romance. Start this whole thing out, symbolically, as equals. It was going to be all meaningful, goddamnit.

He presses his lips, finally, finally to the base of your dick and you decide that your nice, pragmatic fuck can wait until later. He peppers small, lightly sucking kisses up your shaft. You are already as hard as you can hope to be, but you can still feel your dick make a valiant effort.

You finally find it in you to do literally anything other than lay here and make noise. He isn't going to let you sit up, and that's fine, but you aren't going to just stare up at the fucking ceiling. With one hand you shove the sheet off and out of the way, then reach down to smooth your fingers through Dave's hair. He hums and your hips jerk. With your free hand you grope around until you find a pillow to shove under your head for a slightly better angle. You can see the top of his head down the length of your body as he explores with lips and tongue, showing far more patience than you have. You really want to use the hand carding his hair to hurry him along, but your desire to let him have his way with you is stronger.

You can't help but remember again the last time he did this. Your conflict. His audacity. Your surrender. Your mutual passion. Your remorse. And all the shit that happened after. This, no surprise, feels better.

The conflict is absent and all the space in your brain where it would have been is full of want. He presses his lips to the place right below the head and sucks ever so slightly. You don't bother to conceal your groan. You tug at his hair with one hand and yank at your own hair with the other like maybe you can control your own actions that way. He hasn't done any damn thing yet and your toes are curling like you've never done this before, but it's ok. This is your brother who knows you and loves you and understands you so well. Unlike the rest of the world, he deserves to see your real face, not the stiff facade you present to everyone else. He does it again and you finally get out the first real word you have managed this morning.

"Please!" It's a whine and a plea and a prayer and Dave stops. You cuss. He glances up to meet your eyes and presses one last kiss to the very head of your dick. You barely even feel it with the way his eyes burn into yours.

"Dave," you breathe reverently.

"Bro-" he starts, but you grab ahold of his shoulder and urge him up. He goes willingly, crawling up your body like something out of a dream. He settles chest to chest with you, keeping his head up with an elbow on either side of yours, chin in his hands. For a long moment he looks at you like he'll be able to see the answer to some question in your eyes. Whatever it is he is looking for he must find it, because he smiles like the sun. You can't remember the last time he showed a smile. You taught him to hide his emotions from the cold, cruel world, when did that start to include you?

You lose that train of thought pretty quick when his smile turns sly, his hands slip down to cup your face, and he slowly lowers his head until the angle is such that you can't quite meet his eyes any more. You wrap your arms around him and hold him close.

"I'm glad you came for me," he whispers, lips just brushing yours. "I'm glad you didn't let me… languish there." He says it like a quote, but he presses a kiss to your lips distracting you from that line of thinking. He continues speaking before you have the time to return the kiss. "She almost had it out of me you know. What it was I was so out of my head about." He laughs a quiet snicker. "I think this is better than spilling the whole thing. Yeah?"

"Hell fucking yeah," you snarl. Something in his words sparked something hot and hungry in you and you are DONE being teased. You are awake and horny and your sexyhot bro is all up in your business, but not taking it anywhere. It's time for action.

In a motion too quick for the eye to catch, you flip over so that Dave is beneath you, caged by your arms and knees. It was a move he could have easily countered if he wanted to, something that you have used dozens of times in strife after strife. But instead of fighting you he rolls with it. He looks up at you breathing deep and clutching at your shoulders. You want to just carry this on to its inevitable conclusion: kiss him breathless, bite him boneless, hold him thoughtless. But you need to say something. You aren't the best at responding to emotional situations, but you’ve watched enough TV, at least, to recognize your cue.

"Dave…" You have to pause to swallow past your suddenly dry throat. You don't know what to say, but you need to say something. You need to assure him that everything is ok. "Dave, I'm not sure what else to say but-" you hesitate, not sure if you have this kind of honesty in you. Then you man up. "I want you, Dave. Only you. I think that I have for a long time."

You are trying to come up with more words, but that was enough. You see the same flare in his eyes that he, a few moments before, sparked in you. He surges upwards to claim your mouth with his own. You hadn't realized just how much he was holding back until he really let himself go. His hands are everywhere: pulling your hair, cupping your face, smoothing your back, clutching your ass. You can't hope to keep up and don't even want to. You allow yourself to get swept away by his passion until your head empties of everything else. It's all you can do to keep from collapse. You hold yourself up through sheer force of your tenuous will.

It's a slow burn. A touch of lips, then a press, then a parting. Dave whimpers, pressing closer. His heels dig into the flesh just above your ass and his nails find purchase just below your shoulder blades. The slight burn pinging up and down your spine in a rush of heat. You don't whimper in return, but it's a close thing.

You are the fucking adult in this situation. You are the one with years and years of sexual experience. You can't let yourself swoon all over the place from kissing like you're back in middle school. And as much as you want to just kiss until you can't feel your lips you blueballed yourself like nobody's business yesterday. You need to exacerbate this whole thing into something purposeful for both of you. You start to kiss him with more purpose, hands slipping under his back to arch him against you. His fingers settle, digging in where they came to rest at your shoulder blades.

You kiss and kiss and kiss until, if asked, you wouldn't remember your own name. Just Dave's. Your thoughts are full of Dave, your world is Dave. You aren't sure just how you are staying upright. You feel weak. The strength sapped out of every joint by overwhelming *feeling*. There is so much skin, so much heat.

You are sure that you were going somewhere with this. You start to pull back to give yourself a moment to think.

"Dave!" you hiss, distracted by his legs wrapped around your hips and the sweet, sweet pressure. You can feel his dick press against your stomach and it makes you want so much. Want to thrust against him until you both come, want to grab your lengths together, want to thigh fuck him until neither of you can think straight. Shit. You dig your teeth into his prominent collarbones to distract yourself and it just makes him writhe and need under you.

"Shhhhhit!!" he hisses, digging his nails hard enough to leave marks for days. You pull him closer.

"Dave, Dave, Dave," you gasp as you bite your way up his throat. In the edge of your vision you watch his mouth fall open, and he drops his head back to give you even better access. You move up, bypassing his mouth entirely to tug on his earlobe with tongue and teeth and grind down against him. Dave writhes, clearly not sure what to do with all the attention you are lavishing upon him. Your hands are in constant motion, touching here, stroking here, pressing here.

All of a sudden it hits you a bit like a sledgehammer to whatever part of the brain governs lust. You have Dave, your bro, the object of more of your lascivious thoughts than anyone else on earth ever, right fucking here. And you can have him in all of the ways you have imagined because he wants it too. You are in his presence with him wanting you, and it's the first damn time you've been together with access to lube, and goddamn if you aren't going to take advantage.

Unfortunately you've both still got your fucking boxers on.

You abandon your assault on Dave's neck and shoulder - oops, that's going to leave a hell of a mark - and push back, breathing heavily.

"No-" Dave starts, but you silence him with a kiss before pulling back again.

"Get. Yourself. Naked," you pant, already reaching back to push down your own boxers the rest of the way.

He wriggles under you trying to get undressed without leaving the cage of your arms and legs. You kick out with first one foot, then the other, until your boxers land somewhere near the foot of the bed. His sail over your shoulder and hit the opposite wall.

"Lube?" you ask, ready to run for your stash, but hoping you don't have to.

"Bedside table, bottom drawer," he said, hands skating down your ribs and over your stomach to hover nearly touching your dick. You grit your teeth and don't beg as you stretch for the drawer. The shift in position gets you what you want anyway, bumping the head into his fingers. He thankfully takes this as a welcome invitation and begins feeling up every millimeter as if he hasn't already had his hands and mouth all over you. You miss the handle of the drawer completely as your whole body clenches with the shock of contact. The second attempt does it and you try not to flail around too uselessly as Dave's grip firms to pump you as well as he can from his poor angle. You swear between gritted teeth as your hands finally, finally close around a bottle. You pull back with a triumphant shout that is only a little distorted by a whine when Dave changes his grip.

Dave tries to snatch the bottle from your hand, but you hold it away. You still have an idea of exactly how you want this done and no tempting brother is going to sway you from your path no matter how sweetly he may fondle your manly bits.

You sit back, pulling away all together. He tries to pull you right back down again, but you aren't having any of it. You shove him (affectionately) out of the way until you are sitting against the backboard, legs not quite crossed. Dave takes the hint with acumen, crawling into the space you left for him and hooking his legs around you.

He is so much shorter than you at sixteen-going-on-seventeen that even half sitting on your legs he has to tilt his head up to kiss you. You didn't hit your final growth spurt until you were nineteen, so he still has time, you reflect, and then quash that train of thought down like boner-killer it totally is. The thought of watching Dave grow and mature out of this lanky teenager sends something warm and possessive and not terribly sexual surging through you. Fortunately it's easy to shift your focus to all that dick between the two of you, and then it is all you can do to keep from shoving him onto his back and having your way until your body is all he can remember.

You instead keep yourself still and close, cocks pressed between your bodies and half-forgotten as you tease at his mouth with tongue then teeth, stifling his sounds with your lips. You hold him close enough that maybe you could pull him into your heart and keep him close and yours forever.

Eventually you realize that Dave is getting pretty near the end of his rope. You could probably keep at this all day, but he is sixteen, with all the associated hormones. You are holding him and he is pressing close enough that he can't quite hump your stomach to completion, but he's certainly giving it a concentrated effort. You snicker against his lips and he moans. Well. It's hard to say no to that.

You reluctantly remove one hand from where the pair had migrated to his ass to feel around for the lube. When you find it you don't bother wasting time. You pour a bit out into one palm and then push Dave back in your lap enough to get a hand between the two of you. With the other you adjust the angle of his hips on your legs until your lengths are aligned just the way you like it.

At first you move slowly, just trying to get the lube spread around so that everything will glide nice and smooth, but that ceases to be enough for Dave almost immediately. He untangles one hand from your hair to join with yours between you, trying to force the speed up. You try to keep it slow, draw it out, and he tries to drive the both of you to the finish line. The result is a steady pace that has Dave's toes curling and uncurling against your hips and your breath hitching with each exhale.

Almost the moment you got your hand involved your kiss descended into a messy smearing of lips and gasped words. Dave's are a litany of "please, please, please" and yours is… you don't really know. It feels too good to think on whatever your mouth might be saying. You are too focused on the feel of Dave's cock against your hand and against your own for you to think about much else. So hot and smooth and right. You moan and bite your lip hard to keep from coming.

You adjust the angle slightly and let Dave pick up the pace. It is enough for him. You feel his release against your stomach and up to your chest, which topples you over the edge before you realize it is happening. You're probably yelling and who knows what else, but you just gave the last fuck you had to give.

You somehow manage to topple to the side that won't result in the two of you falling out of bed. For a minute you breathe still wrapped up in each other as close as you can get. His heart is pounding so hard that you can almost hear it. That was far and away the best orgasm you ever had. You can't feel your legs.

On further though that might be a result of the way they are tangled up with Dave's. As much as you would like to lay here in post-coital bliss for the rest of your life, more or less, you are both covered in lube and jizz and there is not a single thing about your position that is even a little bit comfortable. You untangle yourself from a clingy and more than half asleep Dave with difficulty to head for the bathroom for a washcloth. As you push off the bed you almost fall flat on your face with just how asleep your legs are. You stagger from wall to door on your way, already planning just how you'll do this better next time so you don't end up wobbling like a newborn colt.

Dave is still fuck-drunk and pliant when you return to clean him up. He doesn't seem to even notice as you wipe him off and climb in beside him, wrapping him in your arms once again. Which you hope to do every night for a long, long time.

The thought hits you suddenly and it kills your buzz like a bucket of ice water. Some day he is going to find someone his own age or go off to college or get tired of you and then where are you going to be? Alone and pining all over again as he moves on and starts his own life independent of you. Fuck. You shove the thought out of your head angrily. There is more than enough time to worry about that some time you didn't just have the best sex of your life. It's amazing how even mutual masturbation can feel so much when it is with the person you are about the most. Unfortunately Dave already felt you tense.

"What?" he mumbles.

No point lying now. That's what got you in this fix in the first place anyway. "This can't last forever you know," you whisper. You can hear the fear in your voice and hope that Dave can't.

"I know," he replies, resigned. 

You are both quiet for a long moment.

"I know," he says again. "But let's make the most of it while we can." And he twists around to cover your mouth with his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Thanks for reading folks!
> 
> And happy 4/13!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Questions? Just wanna say hi? Message me at [a-bench.tumblr.com](http://a-bench.tumblr.com).


End file.
